You can now order the Lost Art Press version of “Welsh Stick Chairs” in the U.K. and Europe through Classic Hand Tools in Suffolk. Classic Hand Tools is currently taking pre-orders and will ship those out when the books arrive there (we hope in December).
We are also offering this book to our distributors world-wide, though I don’t have any information on if they have agreed to carry it.
We are especially happy that the book can now be purchased in Wales, which is where John Brown was from and where he wrote this important little book.
My normal schtick on fixing up an old jack plane goes something like this:
Me (showing a jack plane to someone across the room): “Hey, does this sole look flat to you?”
Student: “Uh, I guess so?”
Me: “Then it’s ready to go to work.”
The above is a bit of hyperbole, but it is mostly true. Jack planes require the least amount of tuning to work really well. The reason? They take a coarse shaving, so the sole doesn’t have to be particularly flat for them to perform their duties. If you are in a hurry, you can usually grind and hone the iron and just go to work.
But I love my jack plane, and so I like to do a little work so that the controls move smoothly and the parts fit together nicely. If you think this is an admirable goal, read on.
A clean and oiled screw for the brass adjuster makes using the plane a much nicer experience.
Disassembly & Cleaning
Most jack planes have had a hard life and have had shavings and dust rammed into every possible orifice. A simple cleaning works wonders.
Take apart the entire plane. If something can be unscrewed, unscrew it. Remove the frog, the knob and tote. Unwind the blade-adjustment nut all the way (it likely will come off). Remove the screws that affix and adjust the frog.
Now fetch some cleaning tools. I use an old toothbrush, a coarse brass-bristle brush and some sort of liquid – Simple Green, mineral spirits, machine oil, WD-40 or anything else that is metal-friendly. Scrub the parts first with a toothbrush and solvent. Then use the brass-bristle brush (soaked with liquid) to clean the threads of every screw down to bare, shiny, lovely metal.
If the tapped holes in the plane are filled with gunk, clean those out with a bristled brush and some liquid. Bare metal is the goal.
Lubricate the screw threads with a light coat of machine oil.
Usually the frog isn’t much of a problem. But a little flattening doesn’t hurt. Here’s my progress after 5 seconds on #80 sandpaper.
Check the Frog
The frog of your jack plane is its heart. The bedding surface for the iron needs to be flat or perhaps slightly concave from end to end. If it is convex, the cutter might (or might not) chatter.
Before you get your panties in a wad about flattening the frog’s bedding surface, it’s important to understand what’s important about the cutter. Does the cutter need to be perfectly bedded on the entire iron? No. Does the cutter need to be bedded at two points on the frog? Not in my experience (though I used to think this was true). What’s important is that the cutter, chipbreaker and lever cap are all bedded tightly to the frog in the area right behind the mouth of the tool. If the cutter is secured there, you’re probably going to be OK, even if it’s not in full contact on the rest of the frog.
Lucky for us, the way a plane works helps ensure that cutter is firmly held exactly where it needs to be firmly held. The lever cap presses everything down at the right spot. So even if you have a crap-ish plane, you can tighten the grip of the lever cap to get the tool to work. The problem with that super-tighten-this strategy is that when the lever cap is really tight, you cannot adjust the position of the cutter. That is a pain.
My goal is to tune the plane so you can both easily adjust the cutting depth and the cutter won’t chatter. I have found that flattening the frog’s bedding surface helps me achieve my goal.
The completed frog surface.
Remove the screw in the middle of the frog (if you haven’t already). Rub the wide, flat surface of the frog on a diamond stone, coarse sharpening stone or some #80 paper stuck to a piece of granite. Flatten it as best you can (the lateral adjustment mechanism will get in the way of doing this easily). This is quick work – cast iron cuts quickly – and the work can only help the tool’s performance.
I can feel if the frog and back of the mouth are perfectly aligned on both sides of the mouth.
Attach the frog to the plane’s body. Position the frog so the tool’s mouth will be quite open. But don’t position the frog so far back that the plane iron cannot sit flat on the frog. For me, I position the frog so it is in the same plane as the back edge of the plane’s mouth. This position ensures that the iron will have free movement and will sit flat on the frog.
Tighten the frog’s screws tightly. Many people skip this step (by accident). Attach the the plane’s tote and front knob. Assemble the iron and chipbreaker. Secure them with the lever cap. Adjust the adjustment screw in the center of it all so that the cutter will move but is still held tightly.
So this is a little meta – I’m using a printout of this story to check the flatness of the plane’s sole. Copy paper is 3.5 thou thick. Not sure where my feeler gauges wandered off to.
Check the Sole
I hesitate to wade into this thicket. Does the sole have to be NASA flat to work? No. But if I had to choose a plane with a flat-ish sole or an unflat sole, I will choose the flatter sole every time. Bottom line: A little flattening doesn’t hurt. And it might help.
But before you rush out to buy some of the this, that or the other supplies for flattening a sole, give the sole a good gander. Here’s how.
You need a metal straightedge and feeler gauges. Retract the iron so it’s not in the way. Place the plane upside down in a bench vise and squeeze it just enough to hold it in place. Place the straightedge on the sole of the tool and try to fit a .002” gauge under the straightedge at various locations. Move the straightedge around.
After a few pokes with the feeler gauge, you will know what the sole looks like to a .002” feeler gauge.
Switch to a .004” feeler gauge and repeat the test. Then a .006”. Now stop. You now know where the low spots are on the plane’s sole. If you have low spots that a .006” feeler gauge can find (many planes do not) then you might consider flattening the sole a bit.
A 36″ length of marble threshold ($9 at the home center) is an excellent plate on which to affix your sandpaper.
Here’s how I do it. Please note, I am not a machinist or pretend to be.
Go to the home center with a nice straight steel 12” ruler and visit the tile section. Find a cheap pile of 12”-square granite tile (usually $4 or less), or a piece of granite threshold (about $9). Probe the pile and search for one tile that is flat. It won’t take long.
Go to the sandpaper section and buy some belt sander paper intended for stainless steel. Usually #80 grit is good. Go to the adhesive section and get some aerosol adhesive (3M makes some). Pay for it all.
At home, adhere the sandpaper to the tile. Now you can flatten plane soles so they are good enough for woodworking. Rub the sole on the sandpaper. Use circular and linear motions. Check your work with the straightedge and feeler gauges. You should be able to get the sole quite flat in less time than it takes to get a pizza delivered.
The sole after 15 seconds of flattening. It was pretty much dead flat to begin with.
Clean the sole with oil and a rag. You probably have some grit and crap inside the frog now. So take apart the whole tool, clean it and wait for my next installment on sharpening the iron and preparing the cap iron and chipbreaker.
Bevel the edges of your sole to make them stronger.
Beveling the edges of the sole is always a good idea for jack planes. They see some nasty knots, and the chamfer protects the edge of the sole from getting dinged up.
All my classes at the Covington, Ky., storefront are full (I highly recommend you join the waitlist here – people’s lives can change dramatically in a moment). But I now have classes in Germany and Florida that have opened their registration for 2020.
All of these are classes that I’ve never taught before (always fun). Here are the details:
In this class we’ll make a reproduction of a Japanese sliding-lid box I measured while I was overseas. It’s a fun project to make. Though the joinery is simple – finger joints and steel dome-head nails – the real challenge is keeping all the details crisp and producing beautiful surfaces.
The Staked Worktable from “The Anarchist’s Design Book” is one of my favorite original designs. And I’m excited that Dictum has agreed to run this course. It’s a bit of a challenging project because of the sheer scale of the materials – large legs, large compound-angle mortises and some big sliding dovetails. The class takes place on the grounds of a beautiful monastery in Niederalteich, Germany.
This four-day class is a solid introduction to making contemporary chairs using traditional methods. We’ll get into basic steam-bending, compound-angle joinery, tapered mortise-and-tenon construction and saddling a seat. Because we are building a side chair (instead of a more involved armchair) the pace will be less brutal and we’ll be able to explore alternative methods throughout the week. The classroom is in the heart of Munich, right by a large train station with lots of places to eat and things to do. So bringing your family might be a good idea.
In the coming weeks, I hope to announce three more classes for 2020 – two in the United States and one in the United Kingdom. We are still working out the details, and then I’ll announce them here.
Today began with a jolt. After a long morning at the Cliffs of Moher, Lucy and I hopped in our rental car to head to Dublin. But first we had to face Corkscrew Hill.
Just as I finished the last of the hill’s switchbacks, an oncoming lorry (semi) ran us off the road and into a berm. Price: One front tyre. I changed the tyre in the spitting rain, and we limped to a repair shop to get the car sorted and inspected.
This resulted in the best “bon mot” of the trip. We ended up in a Polish tyre shop in a small village. They replaced the tyre in 15 minutes (amazing) and charged us only 65 Euros. As I paid the bill I was shivering and sopping wet – my pants and shoes caked in mud.
“You are on holiday?” the owner asked, looking out at the rain coming down. I nodded. “You are in the wrong country.”
After arriving in Dubin, we each ate a quick sandwich, and I had my first pint of Guinness in Dublin – right across the street from the brewery. Not bad. Then we trekked to the National Museum of Ireland and stormed the furniture on display, including the Irish Country Furniture Exhibit.
When I entered the room, it was like having an eye exam. The lighting was intense and marked by dark slashes, and it bewildered me. After a few seconds, the main display came into focus: 10 chairs in little backlit stalls. The good news: You could get within a few inches of all of the chairs. The bad news, the backlighting was so intense that it was difficult to see (or photograph) the objects.
All of the photos below have been heavily Photoshopped so you can see some details.
I have tons of notes on each of the chairs, but those would bore most of you. So we’ll just look at the photos for now.
After that exhibit, the museum had a good number of other vernacular chairs on display with fairly standard lighting. Those are shown below.
Tomorrow, Lucy and I head to Slane in County Meath to meet with Mark Jenkinson, who runs The Cider Mill and is a long-time chair collector. This should be the highlight of the geeky chair segment of our vacation.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. For those of you who think I am abusing Lucy, we are doing lots of non-woodworking stuff. Don’t believe me? I have three words for you: National Leprechaun Museum. And yes, we’re doing the “after dark” adults-only tour. Pray for me.
After years of studying Welsh chairs, my mind turned to the map. Wales has a long history that is intertwined with its neighbors – for better or for worse. Could there be similar chairs built in Scotland, Devon, Cornwall and Ireland?
The answer is, of course, yes. Faced with somewhat similar materials, geography, economy, oppression and tools, it would follow that stick chairs would be the result. After years of reading about Irish vernacular furniture, today Lucy and I plunged head first into it at the Irish Agricultural Museum on the grounds of Johnstown Castle. The museum is mostly about farm implements and transportation. But there are two areas that were captivating.
First was the exhibit on the Irish potato famine of the mid-19th century. This fungal event changed the course of history for Ireland (which lost 25 percent of its population), the United States (which absorbed many of them) and furniture, which became weirdly tied to the famine by antiques dealers. They now label anything a “famine chair” as a result. The dealers are usually wrong, but the association does raise people’s interest in the furniture.
Second was the “Irish Country Furniture Exhibition,” a partnership between the Irish Agricultural Museum and the Irish Country Furniture Society. This exhibit features all manner of vernacular pieces from the 18th to 20th centuries. You could write a book about the fine pieces in this collection. We spent our time focused on the chairs in the exhibit.
Side note. Lucy is now on her third glass of wine. This is our first vacation alone in two decades. She reports: “I like chairs. They looked comfortable. We totally could have gotten over the wire to sit in them but we didn’t because we follow the law; hashtag respect the Irish.”
After almost two hours of examining and photographing the chairs, we headed west to Doolin to see a beautiful sunset and eat some seafood. This evening I’m poring over the hundreds of photos I took and trying to make sense of them. But it takes a while to process the overall forms and their details.
Here are a few snapshots of the chairs I liked in particular.
